Colours in the Steel Read Online Free PDF Page A

isn’t a punishment for him, it’s part of his job. I wanted him to hurt .’
    ‘Well, tough,’ Alexius snapped. ‘You’ll just have to make do, that’s all. Assuming that it works, of course. As I told you, there’s a good chance that it won’t.’
    The girl stood up. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. She walked towards the door.
    Why is it, Alexius asked himself, that young people are simply incapable of saying thank you? She was just about to vanish into the sharp blade of light she’d come in through when he remembered.
    ‘What’s your name?’ he called out.
    ‘Iseutz.’ Her voice, in the dark. ‘Iseutz Hedin.’
    ‘See you in class,’ he called out as the door closed. He knew he wouldn’t. One down, four hundred and ninety-nine to go.
    When the hall steward came to lower the chandelier, Alexius threw a book at him.

CHAPTER TWO
     
     
    Traditionally, the best way to approach the island on which Perimadeia, oldest and most beautiful of cities, is built is from the seaward side. At first, only the lighthouse is visible over the skyline. As the ship comes closer, the towers of the Phylax and the spires of the Phrontisterion poke up above the horizon like green shoots of corn. Shortly after that, the mountain itself rises up out of the water and the foreigner sees the first distant prospect of the Triple City. The summit of the mountain is an unworldly flash of white marble and gilded rooftops, and ignorant offcomers who know no better than to believe in gods at once assume that here is where they live. When they’re told that the upper city is the residence of the imperial family, they find it easy enough to make the association in their minds between gods and emperors, a natural-enough reaction which generations of Perimadeian diplomats have exploited to the full. Since nobody ever enters or leaves the upper city, the assumptions of barbarian visitors cannot be refuted; not that the Perimadeian state ever tries too hard.
    Below the white and gold crown lies the second city, a breathtaking jumble of palaces, temples, banks, market halls and public buildings of all kinds interspersed with and often indistinguishable from the private residences of the rich and mighty. All great Perimadeians intend their houses to look like glorious and awe-inspiring office buildings, and many a confused envoy or merchant has wandered for an hour among the cloisters and corridors of a second-city edifice only to find out eventually that he’s in some private citizen’s home.
    The lower city can only be seen when the ship is close to land, since it is largely obscured by the colossal sea walls, invulnerable guardians of the city for seven centuries. Once visible, the largest and busiest section of the city looks like any city anywhere, except that it’s much larger and more concentrated; as if the great conquering emperors of the past had scooped up the cities acquired on their campaigns, picked out the loot and everything else worth having and dumped the empty buildings at the foot of the mountain like a huge pile of oyster shells.
    If the city is approached from either of the two branches of the river in whose fork the island lies, the prospect is slightly less dramatic; the traveller sees the whole mountain at once as he comes through the narrow passes of the surrounding hills, and the land walls don’t mask the lower city in the same way as the maritime defences do. From the river approach, Perimadeia appears as a very large city divided into three levels, with freshwater estuaries on two sides and the sea on the third; impregnable, arrogant, infinitely rich, but not necessarily a dwelling-place of gods. Gods would have servants’ quarters, but they would be cleaner and not quite so dark and cramped.
    Another advantage of approaching from the sea, as a result of the prevailing winds, is that the smell only becomes noticeable once the ship has made landfall in the harbour of the Golden Crescent. Travellers arriving